


Just One Line

by KrissyG927



Series: The Angst Show [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Daryl Dixon Smut, Daryl Dixon/Carol Peletier Smut, Divorce, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Mentions of Cancer, One Shot, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Separation Anxiety, Separations, Sickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:10:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5817166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrissyG927/pseuds/KrissyG927
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A/N: This is an angst show. I don’t know what got into me but I will tell you I was talking to Magenta’s Nightmare at the time. She always challenges me to try new Ideas. She supports the crazy, but I think that’s a wonderful thing. I love you Magenta xoxox.<br/>This is a little dark, but I never write an unhappy ending. I promise that after all the angst there will be happiness.  I based Carol’s experience on a friend’s experience and I will tell you this friend of mine is my hero. She is the strongest woman I know. She is a single mother of three children who has survived Cancer twice.<br/>That being said, I did take a little creative license for the purpose of telling a story. But I assure you, the important parts are true. It’s possible to do what is done in this story. My friend did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just One Line

The papers came in the mail in late June, almost like a mockery of everything they had since their anniversary was in July. It would be eighteen years on July 21st and he decided he wasn’t signing before the anniversary just because.

Just because he needed to have some control over this, for his own sanity.

He had to put them away somewhere though, because this was his weekend with Sophia and he didn’t want her to be upset. She already was upset, she didn’t understand how one day her parents were in love and happy and the next day they weren’t. How one-day life was normal and predictable and the next day it was all changed, and not for the good, in his opinion.

At sixteen she didn’t understand adult things and frankly neither did he sometimes, because he had always been so happy.

Did it just run its course, or run out of steam, he didn’t know at all. All he did know is that Carol had asked him to move out and it was over. He was thirty-six and about to be divorced from the only woman he had ever loved, and the only woman he felt he would ever love.

His former neighbor, because of course he didn’t live at their house anymore, Rick was on his second marriage. Rick was happy, he had custody of his boy and girl, both Sophia’s age and he said he loved Michonne more than he had ever loved Lori.

Rick told Daryl in a year he would feel so much better and it would all be different, but he didn’t want to hear that, because he didn’t want to feel different. He missed her and he wished he knew what he had done wrong so he could fix it.

He and Carol had been high school sweethearts, married right out of high school, barely eighteen and deliriously happy. They married the July after their high school graduation at city hall and Sophia was born a year and a half later. It had been everything he ever wanted and although they were poor for such a long time, they were happy. Their small family being just enough for both of them.

They lived with Merle for the first five years they were married in the old house down by the woods where he grew up and they had been happy then. Merle had since torn that house down and built a brand new one in its place for his own wife.

Carol had actually cried when the house was torn down because they had so many memories there. But it was falling apart under Merle’s feet and he had a baby son to worry about.

Dixon Brothers Tow and Auto had been good to both of them and they built something substantial for their families. It was what they had all worked for and wasn’t that supposed to make you happy. The business was booming and they were doing well financially after years of struggling.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Daryl’s mind was still blown that this had happened and it had been months now. It wasn’t supposed to happen to them.

Merle had a son, he was fourteen, two years younger than Sophia but they were like siblings. Chase, Merle’s son, was a big support to Sophia during this time and Daryl told the boy over and over how thankful he was to him. Chase just shrugged and said “It’s what we do Uncle D.”

The twins next door Carl and Judith, who were also sixteen and very experienced with all things divorce were also helping her navigate these uncharted waters. Sophia was hanging in there, and Daryl was proud of her. 

Sometimes he thought Sophia was doing better than him, but he never brought her into that bullshit, he was mourning the end of his marriage when she wasn’t with him.

Rick was trying to help him too and he was grateful to him. Every Monday night he met Rick for a beer and a few games of pool. It was the only socializing he did all week. But he needed Rick to talk to and his knowledge about this new chapter in his life. Even if he wanted to fight it tooth and nail.

Rick and Lori had divorced when the twins were five and Lori had them every other weekend. She had been kind enough to switch too, so that Carl and Judith were home on the weekend Carol had Sophia.

He didn’t know the former Lori Grimes very well, but she was a godsend to his child. He saw her for years coming and going from Rick and Michonne’s and at parties they would have. Lori and her husband Shane were always included, the four of them we’re a divorce success story.

The Grime’s extended family socialized together for the sake of their children and never created a scene at a school play, or concert like the typical divorced couple. It wasn’t the Jerry Springer show, they did it the right way.

Daryl did not want to be a divorce success story though. He wanted to go back home and he was just making it day by day in his little apartment, sinking deeper and deeper into a sad place that he wasn’t sure he could return from.

Soon he would pick Sophia up from Carol and they would go get Chase for a movie and dinner. The Friday night routine for the last ten months.

Ten months apart and now the papers finally came, he had been dreading it because it was so final. Just one line to sign on and it was over forever. All of the struggles together and all of the hard work, gone with one signature, and that didn’t seem right to him.

They finally had enough money to move out on their own, when Sophia was five and Carol could go to college when Sophia was in school, they were happy then. It had been a busy time and they rarely had time together, but they made the most of it.

Now, his business was booming, Carol only had to work part time at the hospital, having finished nursing school when Sophia was nine years old. It was their time to live now, really live, they could go on vacations, they could take it easy a little, and they bought a beautiful house in a beautiful part of town eight years ago. They had it all, and now they had nothing.

It wasn’t that they didn’t fight or that it was perfect, because that wasn’t true, but they were committed. They had always been committed to each other and their life together, to Sophia. They never had bad fights, just normal ones and they always made up right away.

They made up so fast sometimes and with so much passion that she once confessed to letting a little disagreement or two go further just for the make-up sex.

They had been perfect together, but yet here he was holding divorce papers in his hand. If they had fought maybe he could understand it. But they didn’t, not even a disagreement.

This was more than a disagreement apparently and actually it hadn’t been a fight at all, she just asked him to go one day and he hadn’t seen it coming.

Sophia was their only child, they never wanted more once she came into the picture and she made their days joyous. She was daddy’s girl through and through and many a day she could be found in the driveway working side by side with him on the cars, her face full of grease. From the time she was little she was his little grease monkey.

She had been begging for a part time job at the garage for months and for a car. He was going to give her the job if Carol agreed. She could work for the car.

Daryl tossed the packets from Carol’s lawyer into his room and it slid right off the bed and onto the floor. He made no move to go pick them up, that’s where they belonged as far as he was concerned.

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She was out of his league and he always knew it, with her AP classes in high school and her college education. He knew she had finally figured out what he had always known, he wasn’t good enough for her and she could do better.

He supposed that was what she planned to do, trade up as they say. He noticed she always had make up on now, she was trying to find another man he supposed.

He never thought she needed make up, she was beautiful to him without all the frosting, that was what he always told her.

He didn’t understand why she felt like she needed it, but then again, he didn’t understand any of this. He wanted her to let him come home, he couldn’t wrap his head around what had made her want to be done with him.

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It was Lymphoma. They had found a spot on her last mammogram and her Ob- gyn, Tara had called her in, which was not normal. She knew when the phone rang and it was Tara’s office that there was trouble coming. They never called, it was always a note in the mail. Your results are fine see you next year.

She got the phone call.

She knew what that meant, even if she wasn’t a nurse she would have known, they only ask you to come in for one thing.

Tara gave her the news and tried to provide reassurance, she had been her doctor for years, and she delivered Sophia. Tara was one of the good ones, she offered to make he an appointment with the best oncologist in the state and Carol agreed. Then she went home and wrote out her will.

It sat in a safety deposit box at her bank and Michonne had an envelope with the key in it. Michonne thought she was just keeping it for her because of the divorce, no one knew about the cancer.

She went to the oncologist Alisha Merrin who was a kind woman, but told her the odds weren’t good. They had found multiple spots on her mammogram and she needed to make some choices. They would do chemo and eventually she would probably have to have her spleen removed as well, but one step at a time.

There was a 30% cure rate for the type of cancer she had and she didn’t like those odds at all.

For now, oral chemo, which was Carol’s choice and Daryl had to go. 

His mother had died a long, heartbreaking, lingering death their sophomore year of high school from breast cancer and Carol remembered how utterly devastated he had been. Then his father died from throat cancer when they were expecting Sophia and again, she saw what it did to him, like a nightmare replayed over and over in her head. She could not put him through this and let him watch her die.

She didn’t think he was even over it now and his parents had been gone a long time. His face got white at the very mention of the C word and she wouldn’t do that to him again.

If he was mad enough at her, if she succeeded in making him hate her, then maybe he wouldn’t miss her at all when she was gone.

It took her three months to finally start chemo, once Sophia was on a regular visitation schedule with him and gone on the weekends she figured out how to time her meds so she would only be sick then. That didn’t always work out but she had gotten good at pretending. 

Alisha was so pissed at her and told her she was going to go down in history as the worst and most non-compliant patient she ever had.

Carol was a nurse, and they both knew that nurses and even doctors were the worst patients. She was on her seventh month of a yearlong chemo regime and she noticed her hair was getting thinner. She covered up the dusky gray of her skin with makeup, but this would be harder to hide.

One of the ladies she knew from Alisha’s waiting room had extensions, she would have to ask her where she got them.

She had four months left to go, then the surgery, more chemo and a pet scan. Maybe it would work, but likely not. She still had hope to live, but she was realistic. She hugged Sophia tight and often and cried at night when she was asleep because she didn’t want to leave her.

“Dad’s here.” Sophia said to her as she was looking out the front window of their house. She had her backpack all packed and was ready to go see “Suicide Squad” with him and Chase that night.

She watched him get out of the car and look at the house. She knew he was hurting; it was obvious every time she saw him. He always stared at the house first before he came to the door, as if he couldn’t believe he didn’t live here anymore.

He was hurting, it was clear in his beautiful eyes. She thought about telling him, all the time actually, but this hurt now, this pain, was so much better than the hurt and pain later when she was gone.

She just didn’t want him to be hurting when he stood at her grave, it was better this way, and she told herself that every day. He would be angry with her and he would get over it and find someone else.

Still when she looked out the window at him it was with a longing she couldn’t get rid of and she didn’t want to. He was it for her and the only and the last man she would ever love.

She wiped the tears away that were trying to drip down her face and went to open the door. She tried to get him out of there quick when he came to get Sophia, it was better that way, for both of them.

She opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. He was walking up the driveway and it was so hard to not take him in her arms. She wanted to, every second of every day.

“Hey.” He said, as he walked up and took the backwards baseball cap off of his head. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.” She said giving him just a polite smile. But I won’t be, as soon as you leave I’ll go take a handful of pills and be sick for two days.

He nodded. “Sophia ready?”

“Yeah, she’s just getting her hoodie, Its always cold at the movies.”

“You wanna come along? Harley Quinn.” He said, smiling quirking an eyebrow at her, trying to entice her by mentioning her DC favorite characters. “And Mistah J.”

Yes, I want to go. She shook her head. “I have plans tonight.”

He looked down and nodded, he had expected as much, but it was worth a shot. Maybe she had a date and he didn’t want to think about that. It made him so upset, but it was her right.

“Carol, did you lose weight.” He asked, he had noticed the last time he saw her that she was getting skinny, and he was worried about her.

“No.” She answered abruptly. “I’m wearing black; it always makes me look thin.”

“Oh, ok.” Bullshit, you’ve lost fifteen pounds at least, I know every inch of your body.” Must be that then.”  
He looked down and then back up at her.

“You aren’t dieting are you? Cause you don’t need to.” Fuck! what a dumb thing to say.” You ok?”

No I miss you. “I’m fine.” I’m scared.

She knew he was wondering, if she was going to call him again or if he could call her. They had slept together three times since she asked him to leave. The first time was by accident, if it could ever be an accident. 

He had come over to clean the gutters one day while Sophia was at school, because he still wanted to do those things for them. He couldn’t not do the things he always did around the house, who else would? He still showed up if it snowed to plow the driveway and wipe the snow off of her jeep too. Daryl couldn’t stop taking care of his family and he didn’t want to.

She had worked night shift and when she got up she saw him, she asked him in for a cup of iced tea. What started as them trying to be civil and friends ended up in bed.

The second time he showed up at her door one night and just asked. The third time she called him while Sophia was sleeping over at Rick and Michonne’s. He had to park down the street like a thief at his own house, but he had done it. That was three weeks ago, and he told her then he wanted to come home.

Carol turned and looked into the house as Sophia was coming down the hall with her back pack.

“Here she is.” Carol said. “You two have fun.”

She hugged Sophia as she scooted past her and down the side walk towards his truck.

“Ok, see you Sunday, is five ok?” He asked and she nodded in agreement.

“Say hi to Chase for me.” Don’t go. I’m really afraid to die alone.

“Ok I will.” I still love you. I don’t know how to stop.

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The phone was ringing on Saturday morning and it woke her from a deep sleep. She knew better than to sit up too fast or she would throw up all over herself. That was a mistake you only made once. They didn’t tell you about that in all the pamphlets. They told you all about diet and hydrating, and saltine crackers, which was a joke when you were throwing up violently, but there it was.

But little tips and tricks were sorely lacking. She needed to write this all down for someone to pass on to other people. She could write a book on this crap.

She felt sick, so fucking sick, and that was expected.

She needed her Zofran already, she had taken it early that morning, but it wasn’t helping the nausea at all.

She reached for the phone and slid the screen before looking at it, she would have answered for him anyway.

“Carol, its Merle.”

“Hey Merle.” She said sitting up carefully, her body ached and she felt like she had the worst flu ever. This was bone pain, deep and cutting, like she was made of glass. It felt like she was dying a thousand deaths, each worse than the last. 

Carol felt like her bones would shatter in a million pieces if she moved the wrong way.

She would feel this way until Tuesday, just in time to go to work for the next three days, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 3-11. Start taking the pills Friday night, be sick Saturday, Sunday, Monday and repeat. 

Her friend Maggie, another nurse at work knew what was going on and helped her whenever she could at work or she would have had to quit by now. Thank God for Maggie Rhee. She was the only person besides Carol and her doctors that knew.

“How are ya?” She said, trying to sound like she didn’t feel like 120 pounds of pounded shit.

“Cookie, I got a bill here or an insurance statement, I’m not sure which. Must have come to the shop instead of the house can I bring it to you?” He said with a soft tone to his voice as if he was afraid to upset her. She could only imagine what Daryl had told him these last few months.

Merle had called her cookie since the first Day Daryl brought her home to meet him, when they were still in high school. It fit her then and still did. She was his cookie and Andrea was his darlin.

“I...” She winced from the pain in her back and the nausea in her stomach that hit her just from rolling over. “Can you mail…” He didn’t let her finish her sentence.

“It’s from a doctor’s office, everything ok with you and squirt?” Merle said. “Can I bring it to you?”

She winced again as she slowly sat up, careful to let her feet dangle on the side of the bed before she attempted to stand up. She couldn’t stand up unless she sat on the bed a good five minutes, sometimes ten. This sucked and she didn’t mind thinking that to herself at all. She had to hide this from Merle though, he would see right through it if he saw her right now.

“Ok, bring it over if you want to.” She said. “But I think I have the flu.”

“Whatever cookie, I got a flu shot.” He said. “Be there in a few.”

She hung up the phone and placed it on the bedside table. She needed to get her shit together before he got there.

She stood up and that was the last thing she remembered until Merle was picking her up and calling her name.

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Merle picked her up and laid her back on the bed as she was starting to come out of it. He held a glass of water in his hand from the kitchen and a straw. He had a cool washcloth on her forehead as if that could cure her. Sweet Merle, he was such a kind man, and the best brother in law she could ever ask for.

She missed him too, she missed Chase and Andrea too.

She loved the time when they all lived together when Sophia was young, they had been such good times. The three of them, then four when Andrea moved in, didn’t have a dime, but they always found a way to have a good time. She missed those days. Carol would go back to that time in a heartbeat.

It was so much simpler then. Now it was complicated and ugly.

The years got away from them when they weren’t looking and now the clock was ticking on her life.

She was so grateful she wore an old t-shirt and sleep pants to bed because she would have been mortified if Merle saw her with less on.

It was bad enough he saw her sick like this and the look on his face showed her that he was mortified right now.

“Cookie you ok.” He asked. “Here drink this.”

She did as she was told, no one said no to Merle, not even Daryl. She knew must be dehydrated, when Sophia went to school on Monday morning she would sneak down to Alisha’s office and get hydrated by IV, because clearly she couldn’t keep much down. 

That would be difficult in of itself because the meds were killing her kidneys, she knew that by the swelling in her feet. Getting hydrated would cause her to swell up and retain fluids. Then she’d have to take another medication to get rid of the excess fluid and she would get dehydrated again. A never ending circle going nowhere fast.

Maybe a Neupogin shot too, she probably had no red blood cells left by now either. Then there were the steroids the double edged sword of medicines. It helped you and harmed you at the same time, just like the chemo.

She was a hot mess and poor Merle was way out of his element here.

“Just dehydrated Merle, told ya it’s a bad flu.” She said. ‘Been puking all night.” That’s not a lie.

“Who’s this Dr. Alisha Merrin?” Merle asked.

“Ob-gyn, pap smear, you know woman stuff.” She said trying to gross him out so he would stop asking questions. He sat down on the bed next to her and fiddled with the blankets, covering her up like she was his child. Trying to take care of her and not knowing how to do it.

“Should I call him?” Merle said and she was already shaking her head.

“Please don’t.” I need him.

“But ya sick, he would want to help you.”

“It’s just a flu, he has Sophia and I’m sure they have plans, I can’t depend on him any more Merle, we’re getting divorced.”

“I know that cookie, but tell me something.” He held the cup for her so she could sip the water.

“Sure Merle.” She forced a smile for him, she would do anything for this man, answer almost any question. “Whatever you want to know.”

“You don’t love my brother anymore?” He said looking her over and noticing that she looked worse than anyone he ever saw with the flu.

I’ll never stop loving him. “No.” She breathed in, those words burned her throat coming out, they burned her soul. “I don’t.”

“It’s really over.” Merle asked her. “Even though if I called him and told him you had the flu he would be here faster than a fucking formula one car to hold your hair back while you puked?”

She shook her head. “I don’t love him anymore.”

“Then why you sleeping in his shirt.” Merle said touching the worn t-shirt he had seen on his brother a million times.

Merle was observant just like Daryl, she had been so careful to not wear his old shirt in front of Sophia and it gave her comfort on the weekends she was sick. Leave it to Merle to catch her. Merle was not a dumb man, by any means.

“He hasn’t moved all his stuff out yet and I was cold.” She said trying to smile, but her face hurt too.

“Sure cookie, just like he don’t own a truck that could move everything out in a weekend.” Merle replied. “But then he wouldn’t have an excuse to come see you, now would he? You know when he forgets his tool box here and shit.”

She sat up more because she knew he wasn’t leaving without calling Daryl unless she put on an academy award winning show for him. That was Merle, he was like a dog with a bone when he had something in his head.

“Let me make you some coffee.” She said getting up and walking slowly across the bedroom floor. “I have some Krispy Kreme’s too Merle, your favorite.”

She started down the hall holding the wall out of his line of vision. If he saw her doing that he would call Daryl and make him take her to the hospital and she couldn’t have that.

“Oh, cookie.” He called after her as he left her room and she replied from somewhere down the hallway.

“Yes, Merle.” She said throwing a false lilt into her voice, trying to sound like herself.

“Daryl told me ya all’s still fucking on occasion and if ya ask me, that aint no divorce.”

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Her hair was definitely falling out, she noticed it more that morning, strands of her auburn glory laying in the sink, on the floor, in the shower. After she got hydrated and got her blood boosting shot she was going to go see about extensions.

What was the saying? Get busy living or get busy dying.

The type of chemo she was on wouldn’t leave her bald, research had shown it would just make some of her hair fall out. If she was lucky that was, and she actually felt lucky that day. Even through it was way more than some that she scooped up in the bathroom to hide from Sophia.

She was ok with that surprisingly, maybe because it could be fixed, and the nice girl at Alisha’s front desk gave her the business card of the salon. She called right away for an appointment and got one for the next day to have her whole head done. She was on her cellphone as she walked out feeling a little perkier from the fluids, or from being proactive and helping herself, she didn’t know which and didn’t care. She didn’t notice Merle sitting in his car in the parking lot.

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The next time Daryl saw her he noticed right away there was something different about her. It was her hair, but he didn’t know what. He kept thinking about it and thinking about it. He thought the color was different, and he really tried hard to pay her compliments still. But he didn’t want to ask, only for her to say she didn’t change her hair and he would feel stupid.

So he stewed over it for days, still with no answer for himself.

He had texted her that morning, because he knew she didn’t have work till 3pm that night and it wasn’t his weekend with Sophia so he wouldn’t see her on Friday. I had been a month and a half since she had called him over at eleven o’clock at night and he had run out the door of his apartment like his ass was on fire. She had let him stay the whole night that time, instead of talking about space and telling him to go home. It was progress and he was going to keep at it, like Andy Dufresne with that little rock pick in ‘Shawshank Redemption’. Andy got where he wanted to go and Daryl was determined to do the same.

They had watched that movie hundreds of times and for the first time he truly got it.

Tomorrow was their 18th wedding anniversary and he wasn’t going to go quietly, that was not how Dixon’s did it.

~Can I come over, please.

~ That’s not a good Idea.

~ Yes it is.

~ I’m on at three.

~ Its nine in the morning, are you still sick? Merle said you had the flu a few weeks ago.

~No I’m fine.

~I’ll bring you coffee. I just want to talk.

They sat down at the kitchen table and he just asked what was different, it looked like her hair grew, now that he thought about it. It usually stopped just above her breasts, he knew that for sure, that was an area he always paid attention to. He knew just where her hair landed on her chest and it was longer, he was positive now.

“Did your hair grow?” He finally just asked her. “Suddenly?”

“No.” She replied taking a sip of her coffee. Observant, that was her husband, and he was still her husband. “What did you want to talk about Daryl?”

She decided on distraction, it had worked on Merle.

“I want you and Sophia to stay in the house, I’ll just keep paying the mortgage.”

“No, you don’t have to, we can sell it, get something smaller.” She said.” We don’t need all this.”

“I don’t wanna take her away from Carl and Judith, not right now anyways. She turns eighteen in two years, we can decide then.”

I probably won’t be here then. “Do you think you’ll sign the papers by then Daryl? I know you got them. It’s just one line.” She asked looking at him directly in the eyes, but his eyes went soft and his face fell.

“It’s not just one line, it’s my whole life, don’t you see that.” He said.

“I need you to sign those papers Daryl.” She said, calling all of the strength inside of her to say these words.

“But, I don’t even know what I did wrong Carol.” He was up out of his chair and over to where she was sitting. He dropped to his knees and laid his head in her lap. She didn’t want to let him, but she couldn’t deny him either. She ran her fingers through his hair. “Wasn’t I good enough for you? I tried so hard.”

He had it all wrong and she just let herself feel it for the first time. He felt her tears hitting his hair. She was unhappy without him, he knew it, why was she putting them through this?

She brought his face up and he was crying and so was she. She wiped her thumbs under his eyes, the eyes that had her transfixed and in love since she was sixteen years old. He did the same for her.

“You were more than good enough.” She said. “It’s not that at all.”

“Tomorrow’s eighteen years, last year we went to the lake, remember just you and I. We had so much fun.” Then two weeks later you had me served at work and changed the locks on the doors.

She nodded. “I remember.”

He remembered that day, he had been under a mustang doing an oil change because the kid Zack, almost blew it up by not checking the oil. Business as usual in his life. It was almost dry and seized when the kid brought it in. He just missed having to put a whole new motor in the car. A few more miles and that would have been it.

A stranger came into the office and Merle called him in from what he was doing. He lit a cigarette as he left the work area and headed to the office. Before he even got to the door the man was in the hallway.

“Daryl Dixon?” He said.

“Who wants to know.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Are. You. Daryl. Dixon.” He said impatiently.

Daryl nodded once and the man handed him and envelope. “You’ve been served.”

“Served what?” He called after the man and then Merle was next to him with a bad feeling. He opened the envelope and when he saw what it was the cigarette dropped out of his mouth and he fell back against the wall as he reached for his phone. 

This wasn’t possible, he had just kissed her goodbye that morning. Thinking back, he remembered now, how haunted she had looked that morning. There had been no other sign and he was blindsided.

“I wanna take you back there, this weekend.” 

Cant chemo. “Daryl, I can’t.” But I wish I could.

“Yes you can. Rick and Michonne would watch Sophia for us.” Please. Baby, please. “Or Merle and Andrea would.”

“I really can’t.” She wrapped her arms around him. “I would, I want to, but I really can’t.”

“But you want to?” Progress. Progress was good. He would take it; he would take whatever she would give him because she was the one. He didn’t want anyone else, not ever. He had tried to go on a date two months ago. She was a nice girl, a friend of a friend and a blind date. But it had been a disaster.

He spent the whole time thinking about his wife, missing her and wishing she was there instead. He took his date home early and he couldn’t bring himself to even kiss her goodnight. He didn’t even want to. That was the night he showed up at their door asking to come in and Carol had held him tight. She had given him what he needed, exactly what he needed, like she always did. He was shaking that night as he drove home afterwards, because he knew. He knew he was never going to get over her.

She nodded and he pulled her close to him remaining on his knees. “Please don’t to this to us, whatever it is about me. I can change it.”

She started crying harder now. “It isn’t about you, It’s about me.”

He leaned back and looked at her. Was she really giving him the its not you it’s me routine. His wife, she was still his wife. Who knew him better than anyone else in this world, who he knew better than anyone else was giving him the ‘it’s not you, it’s me line.’

This was like a bad TV show.

He couldn’t help it, he started to laugh. It must have been some kind of mental snap, he surely shouldn’t be laughing right now, but he was.

Then she started to laugh. “I know this isn’t a Seinfeld episode.” She said as he wiped her tears this time.

“There she is, there’s my girl.” He said and before she could object he was kissing her. Then he was standing up and taking her in his arms. He kissed her harder, like his life depended on it because it did.

She let out a soft sigh and he went in for the kill. He had been kissing her all his life and he knew what he was doing. He slid his tongue against hers followed by a nibble on her bottom lip that always got him what he wanted.

I shouldn’t have let you kiss me because now we’re going to bed and that’s going to make this so much harder.

“Are you trying to get and anniversary bang out of me?” She asked and he kissed her again.

“I’m trying to come home, but. I’ll take what I can get.” He said simply, and kissed her again, trying to steer her towards their room.

“We have to stop doing this.” She whispered, but she was already walking backwards down the hall. His hands were already going up her shirt like they had a mind of their own.

“I know.” He said kissing her again and stopping in the hallway to press into her with her back against the wall.

“I’m not trying to lead you on.” She puffed out as he placed wet kisses down her neck. He was the one doing the leading anyway when he kissed her like that.

“Bullshit, you’ve been leading me around by my dick since I was fifteen.” He said grinning into her neck.

She wanted to say no, she really did. But she was lonely and she missed him. Most days she felt like crap but it was Thursday and every Thursday after the chemo on the weekend she felt like maybe she was going to live. He caught her on a good day and his hands were doing just what she liked.

It wasn’t right but she didn’t care, she needed this. She wanted to feel alive, even if it was just for a little while.

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“She has Cancer.” Merle said when Daryl walked back into the office after being with her all morning. Merle knew where he was, he knew he was asking her to go away the weekend. He didn’t want to just come out with it but it all made so much sense now.

Daryl needed to know what the hell was going on.

Merle had finally gotten the phone call he had been waiting for. He had followed her that day a week or so ago, like a stalker and found out the doctor she saw was an oncologist. Of course when he went in there, no one would tell him a thing. But he found a way and he wasn’t telling anyone how he got the information.

There were rules about that, people could lose their jobs or worse. It took a few weeks, but he got the information and he had just been processing it when Daryl came in.

“Who?” Daryl asked, plopping into the chair in front of the desk.

Merle stopped for a second. This explained so much to him, he knew she still loved him, he could see it in her eyes that day. She had twisted it all up in her head that it was better to cut him loose.

Daryl still loved her too, there was no mistaking that for a second.

He could see it in the absence of edginess in his brother that was always there since she asked him to leave. It wasn’t there right now. They had fucked again and now he was all relaxed nice. Until he came down off that pink cloud and realized he wasn’t going home to her. 

That usually hit him about three hours after, Merle could set his watch to it. He would see his shoulders sag and Merle always knew what that meant.

Now he had to finish this and either answer a bunch of questions with this knowledge or start a whole new bunch of them.

“Carol.” Merle said. “Lymphoma, non- Hodgkin’s, she’s been on chemo for months.”

The hair extensions, the weight loss, he knew something was wrong, Daryl thought as he looked across the desk at Merle. Deep down it had been eating at him, that she was different. He had felt the beads in her hair, when they were in bed just that morning. He asked her if they were extensions, but he had known it already. She said she needed a change and he had said, as long as you don’t change this.

She had laughed, she let him say that stuff in their bedroom but then she always told him to leave. It was confusing to say the least, but it was coming clearer by the minute.

She was losing her hair and trying to hide it. She was trying to hide everything.

The color drained out of Daryl’s face and Merle thought he was going to hyperventilate.

“Is she…is…she.” He couldn’t get the words out. Is she dying?

Merle shook his head. “She’s really sick Daryl.”

He was up out of his chair. “Can you ask Andrea to pick Sophia up today.”

Merle nodded and Daryl was out the door. He busted out the side door of the garage and headed to his truck pulling his cigarettes out.

He never smoked in the house and Carol didn’t smoke, had this caused it? Did he get her sick? The thought knocked the wind out of him, but he had to light up because his nerves were shot and he couldn’t think of anything else but getting back to her.

He dialed her phone number and let it ring as he started the truck and drove the two miles to their house. She didn’t pick up. She was probably in the shower getting ready for work.

He drove like a lunatic to get to her, and it was a good thing he lived next door to the Sherriff, because he wasn’t stopping for any cop.

He pulled in the drive way behind her jeep and he tossed the cigarette into the street. His phone sat on the bench seat of his truck and he just left it there.

Daryl banged on the door until she answered, dressed in her nurse’s scrubs now for work. She must have been about to leave because she had her Littman stethoscope he had bought her around her neck. He r hair was up, but it still looked longer.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He gasped out.

She sighed and let him in. She didn’t know how he knew, but he knew.

“I have to go to work.”

“Go ahead, I’ll be here when you get back.” He said, and it struck him that she was still working, how was she doing it?

“Merle told you?” She asked.

“He didn’t know anything, he figured it out and then I pieced the rest, you lost weight, a lot of weight. Your hair, why didn’t you tell me, I would have come back.” Daryl said. “For God’s sake Carol, I’ve been trying to come back all this time.”

“I didn’t want you to.” She said simply.

“Did you find out after you threw me out?” Daryl said. “I would have…”

She was shaking her head. “I’ve known since last July. I asked you to go after I found out.”

“Why?” He tried to hug her and she was stiff. “Why would you do that.”

She let herself relax into his hug and whispered. “You know why.”

It was all too much and he had to sit down before he fell down. He led her over to the couch and they sat down. He wouldn’t let go of her hands though and he wouldn’t take his eyes off of her either. It all made sense to him now. Her logic was all off base, but at least now he knew what he was up against. He could fight the enemy he knew; it was not knowing why that was making him loose his mind.

This had something to do with his parents, and he realized what she had been trying to do, how she was trying to spare him. He didn’t want to be spared, they were in this together, for better or worse and forever.

“Please, tell me what’s going on.” He pleaded.

“I’m sick and I didn’t want you to mourn over me.” She said, finally telling him the truth and feeling the weight go off her shoulders at the same time.

“So you threw me out?” He said. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard Carol.”

He pulled her into a hug and she returned it right away which wasn’t usual for her these days.

“You were supposed to get mad, not come knocking on my window every five minutes.” She laughed.

“I’ll always be knocking on you window and your door and your roof.” He said lifting her chin with his finger to make her look at him. “You’ll never get rid of me.”

“I’m going to die Daryl.”

He shook his head. “No you aren’t.”

“Probably.” She said. “It doesn’t look promising.”

“Well, of course it doesn’t when you don’t take care of yourself and don’t let anyone help you. I know Soph doesn’t know, because she would have told me.” He said. “So that means you’ve been doing everything all alone. And that’s about to change.”

“Only Maggie knows.”

“And so do I now.” He kissed her. “I want to move back in and before you say anything, I’ll sleep in the guest room if that’s what you want, but you are not doing this alone anymore.”

She nodded her head. “I wanted to protect you.”

“Don’t protect me, ok. I can handle it. It says in sickness and in health you know.”

Till death do us part, she thought to herself.

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Friday night instead of picking Sophia up for the weekend he was packing a bag to take home. Carol had called work and took an extended leave of absence at Daryl’s insistence and then they took Sophia out to dinner to explain to her that he was moving back home. Sophia could not hide her joy.

They also told her about Carol being sick and she had started to cry. Of course she did, any kid would at the prospect of losing a parent. They didn’t lie or sugar coat anything, they never did with her.

Carol explained to her that she was well into treatment and there was a good chance that it would work. She even believed it kind of, finally. It also helped that Alisha called and said her numbers were getting better, they were turning a corner in her treatment after a long time of no change at all. This was a good sign. It was hope.

“So you aren’t getting divorced.” Sophia said. “And your moving back home.”

They both nodded and Sophia smiled a bright smile that they hadn’t seen in a long time.

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That night after Sophia went to bed he held her in their bed and they talked, really talked. He wanted to be angry now, because she took a whole year away from them, from him and if she didn’t make it, that year would be gone forever. But he wasn’t going to even think that way and it felt too good to hold her to start a fight.

The clock on the fireplace chimed while they were talking and she rolled over to face him. It was midnight and they had been married 18 years. She kissed him sweetly and he pulled her close to him.

“We’re going to do something really special for our twentieth anniversary.” He whispered into her ear. “As soon as we handle this cancer thing.”

She nodded her head. She wanted to believe it, she really did and Alisha did offer real hope finally. But in her heart she was guarded. She would let him have this though, because she knew she had taken a lot away from him.

“Where do you want to go sweetheart.” He said pulling her back up against him so that he back was up against his chest. He pulled the blanket over them and pulled her close. “Anywhere you want.”

“Europe? Maybe Hawaii? A cruise? I’ll let you know. Ok?”

“Sure.” He said and he hugged her to him wrapping his leg around her and they both slept better that night than they had in months.

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She made it to their twentieth anniversary and their twenty fifth. She made it for Sophia’s prom and well beyond that. All the things she was so afraid of missing; she was there for because he never let her give up. 

The cancer went into remission, but not before she had to have her spleen removed and another round of chemo and then radiation on top of that. But he was there to help her through every second of it and one day when they were in their early forties he danced her around the dancefloor at Sophia and Carl’s wedding.

They had gone to Europe and Hawaii. And on three cruises.

She never tried to divorce him again and she wrote that book about tricks to help you get through chemo, Called Living with the Devil.

They watched all three of their grandchildren grow up and she and Daryl were never apart a day again. Once he moved back in they were joined at the hip again like nothing had ever happened.

They grew old together in their little house that they loved. When they did die it was within minutes of each other, in their sleep at the age of eighty-eight and they had been married seventy years by that time. Neither of them would walk the earth without the other, and anyone who knew them had no doubt they were still together wherever they were.  
The End

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think :)


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